As they tack left and right state by state, the Democratic presidential contenders can't agree on much. But one cause they all support — along with Republicans such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and California's own Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — is universal health coverage. And all of them are wrong.
What these politicians and many other Americans fail to understand is that there's a big difference between universal coverage and actual access to medical care.
Simply saying that people have health insurance is meaningless.
Many countries provide universal insurance but deny critical procedures to
patients who need them. Britain's Department of Health reported in 2006 that at
any given time, nearly 900,000 Britons are waiting for admission to National
Health Service hospitals, and shortages force the cancellation of more than
50,000 operations each year. In Sweden, the wait for heart surgery can be as
long as 25 weeks, and the average wait for hip replacement surgery is more than
a year. Many of these individuals suffer chronic pain, and judging by the
numbers, some will probably die awaiting treatment. In a 2005 ruling of the
Canadian Supreme Court, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin wrote that "access to a
waiting list is not access to healthcare."
Read the rest at Cato Institute.
3 comments:
The government doesn't have a viable plan for maintaining the funding for their existing social security and medicare programs and these idiots are actually suggesting that we create another extremely expensive unsustainable program? This is insanity.
I realize that healthcare is expensvie, but shouldn't we bo focusing on the causes of that? If the regulations around the health care industry were reduced and there was protection against frivolous lawsuits or suits for occasional unfortunate mistakes the overall costs for medical care would drop. Why can't we have ultra-cheap triage clinics that do quick assessments of a person's situation and prescribe standard treatments for ultra low costs?
A lot of people are uncomfortable with universal healthcare because they think such a system would lower quality and be less practical and "good" in some sense. However, such a system would also be very immoral. A Colorada physician has written an open letter on the topic. You might find it interesting.
Softwarenerd: Excellent link! Thank you!
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